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Last week Met-Ed also added to its record of abominable public relations by announcing that any of its women workers who were pregnant and thus left the area as Governor Thornburgh had advised would have to count their time off the job as vacation days.
Elsewhere in the affected area, dairy farmers and related food processors, including the Hershey Foods Corp., are as worried about adverse psychological effects on their customers as they are about the damage to their products. However, traces of iodine 131 found in local milk supplies turned out to be far less than the levels measured after China's nuclear bomb test in 1976, and even that had been ruled insignificant by health experts. HEW Secretary Joseph Califano stated that the largest radiation dose received by anyone in the area of the plant was the equivalent of two chest X rays. Hershey was still buying over a million Ibs. of milk a day from 935 local farmers, but to be safe was converting it into a powdered form for storage until any possible radiation decays.
Dairy Farmer Tom Williams, who farms 300 acres and owns 110 cows within five miles of Three Mile Island, said he had felt confident all along that the plant would not destroy his livelihood. But he admitted that as a farmer he was naturally an optimist. Explained Williams: "Every spring you plant your grains and have confidence that the sun will shine and the water will come down so your crops will grow. Otherwise, you can't farm."
That tendency to see a bright side in even such a narrow escape from a technological disaster was typical of the response of many Pennsylvanians. Bartender Bud King even went so far as to predict that his home town of Goldsboro would become as popular as Plains, Ga. His explanation: "Tourists are going to flock here to see the famous Three Mile Island plant."
The area had survived three serious floods in recent years and rallied strongly, and surely would again after the accident at that nuclear plant out in the Susquehanna River. Yet there remained an underlying chill that was hard to shake. Retired Dairy Farmer Samuel Williams tried to explain what was so intimidating about the danger of radiation: "This you can't see, can't feel, can't smell." Those four huge cooling towers on the skyline will never look so innocent again.